Can Web 2.0 Grow a Web 1.0 site?

My business partner, Dean, and I are trying to develop a web 2.0 marketing campaign that’ll help drive relevant traffic to our foreclosures website.   The site ranks well under some key terms, but we need a campaign to drive additional traffic and new links to further improve the rankings.

The site is made up of simple foreclosure listings gathered from a variety of sources.   It’s free and totally searchable by site visitors.   So, the question is how do you develop a web 2.0 marketing campaign around this very web 1.0 site?

Two thoughts dominate our thinking:

Video with user/viewer feedback
and
Creating compelling content that’ll help us generate new links to our site

Since the site is fundamentally about finding great foreclosed homes either to live in or as investments, we think we could create content around choosing the best property.   Here’s how it would work (roughly):

We’d create a weekly video series where we feature two different foreclosed homes listed on FreeForeclosureDatabase.com.   In the video, we’d run down the stats on the two homes then invite people to vote on which home would be the “better investment”.   They would be directed to vote by going to the foreclosure website.

I’m thinking we’d have a contest for those who vote… Maybe a random drawing or something like that to encourage people to vote and create a way (and rationale) for collecting an opt-in list.

Of course, there are a lot of additional details to all of this, but this is the core of the idea.

Have you seen any other successful web 2.0 marketing campaigns?  If so which ones?

Teen Makes $325,000 Flipping Domains

Serious money can be made buying and selling domain names.  In fact, a recent article in Forbes features a Connecticut teenager who’s made $325,000 in less than a year.

According to the article:

“It started last September, when
he paid $620 for the Internet
domain name qsd.com and, two
weeks later, sold it for $12,000
to a fellow domain trader, or
“domainer.” Since that first
investment, McDonald has grossed
$325,000 from flipping domains.”

Not bad, I think.

I’ve had a lot of success flipping domains as well.  Last month, I flipped more than $200,000 worth of domains.   It’s good to see others are making good money doing this as well.

Most importantly, this article shows that (despite the piss poor and getting worse economy) people can find innovative and fairly simple ways to make a fortune.    To read the full article go here.

Is your title tag really that important?

In a word… YES.  This is not only what searchers see in the search results, but it’s a big factor in your search engine results page (SURP) position.  Things to consider are…

- Keywords in your Title Tag that you are trying to rank for
- The “Prominence” of your most important keyword phrase you are wanting to rank for (how close it is to the start of the Title
- The Keyword Density (how often your most important keyword you are wanting to rank for is used in the Title tag)
- And Proximity (how many words there are between keywords).

Of course, there is no major formula.  The best thing to do is look at your competitors (that are ranking ahead of you) and see what they are doing.  Position your “Title” to be similar to the competitors that are ranking above you and use that as a “starting point” (front which to start testing).  Then simply test different startegies to see what causes your site to move above your next higher competitor (for a specific keyword phrase).  It’s all about trial and error at that point.  Keep in mind that the number of incoming links to your page (back links) and the quality of those back links… will have a huge impact on your ranking as well.

More about that in another post…

Hello from Dean and Matt

This is just a quick note to say “hello!” and let you know that Dean and Matt have started a new blog that will focus on the following major topics:

Domain Investing
Economy
Traffic Generation
Conversion Optimization
Entrepreneurship

We invite you to return frequently as we’ll be updating the content of our blog daily,

Dean and Matt

What makes a domain name important?

There are several factors that make a domain worth investing in, here are a few things to consider:

• Exiting PageRank
• Alexa Ranking
• Type-in Traffic

For a set of tools that will allow you to indentify these important factors for any domin your are considering purchasing, go to http://www.domainersedge.com

High Gas Prices = Mad as Hell!

Ridiculous. Yes, $3.50+ for a gallon of gas is ridiculous. If you ever want it to change you need to be mad. In fact, you need to adopt the mantra of Howard Beale from the 1976 film, The Network. If you haven’t seen that movie, you should. It was far ahead of it’s time.

Think you have what it takes to be an Entrepreneur?

They say the successful Entrepreneurs have specific personality traits in common.  Here’s a quick little test to see how you compare to some of the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs:

http://www.davincimethod.com/entrepreneur-test/

Spy on Google’s Content Network with this useful tool:

Ever wonder what websites in Google’s content network are giving you the best conversions?  Here’s a cool tool that allows you to gather valuable information about which sites are converting and which sites are not: PPSeer Content Network Tracker. 

This tool allows you to put a little code on your landing page, and a pixel on your “success page” and then pull up a stats page showing you all you need to know about the sites that are being shown your Adwords ads. 

One of the biggest advantages is the fact that you can identify all the sites where your ads “don’t” convert and then exclude them within your Google Adwords account.

Enjoy